The Story of a Backyard
Buried in my backyard are an adolescent fox, a house cat, two squirrels, and several birds. We’d watched a family of foxes with gleeful interest for months when one of the pups was hit by a car in front of our house. I agreed with my devastated wife that we couldn’t just leave him out there. The same was true of the cat. She wasn’t ours, but she was clearly someone’s, and she deserved a proper funeral. The squirrels, too, were roadkill. A lot of animals die on the road in front of our house. It’s a residential street, but it connects two other busy and important roads. People cut through and routinely drive twice the speed limit. So, there’s lots of dead animals to bury in my backyard. I would want to be buried back there too, but the days for that are over.